Friday, September 15, 2006

Two Interviews

I did two interviews recently, one with a reporter from a Family Blah-Blah organization, and one with a reporter for a gay-oriented newspaper.

And I'll tell ya, you can't please everybody in this business.

The Family Blah-Blah guy asked me what I thought of the video. I mostly gave him my regular thoughts, the same thing I tell everybody: I thought it was a good start, I was glad the conservative members of the community approved of it, I said it needed more information.

He asked me, What kind of information?

I told him, Well, first of all, it needs a good definition of abstinence. We want our kids to abstain from sex, but -- and then I read him the definition of abstinence that's in the curriculum:

I told him that if we're serious about young people abstaining from sex, we need to make it clear what they should abstain from.

Then he got me, he really got me. He asked me, What about ex-gays? What do you think about the fact that the video ignores those who have chosen to leave the gay lifestyle?

Remember, I'm paraphrasing all this, as it is not perfectly recorded in my memory. I said, First of all, I have a little problem with that word "lifestyle," but if you're talking about people who used to be gay and aren't any more, well, I guess that person would be straight, and this video would suit their needs just fine.

I can't really think of any way you would make this curriculum different to accommodate someone who has a different sexual orientation from what they used to have, can you? I mean, I know how much they love being persecuted, but ... I don't see it here.

So that was one interview. Oh, by the way, I just checked the web site, and the guy didn't use a single word of mine. It says somewhere in the story -- which quotes CRC's Michelle Turner and PFOX's Regina Griggs -- "Critics call the new video impersonal, but Turner says not it’s appropriate for teens." I can't tell if "critics" reflects my discussion with him, or if they told him that. Also, I can't figure out at all what that sentence is supposed to mean. "Not" what?

The other interview was with The Washington Blade, which is marketed mainly to a gay and lesbian readership. Same thing, what do you think of the video, the usual. A comment I made -- a comment lots of people have made -- was that one problem was that there were no females in the video. There was a pause, and the reporter said something like, Why would you want females in the video? I said, well, most of the time when people have sex, there's a female involved. But I could tell I was losing him. His article came out today, you can read it HERE.

The article is just fine, I'm not complaining. I mean, he might overplay the controversy a little bit, whatever, the story's fine.

But it just hits you sometimes, how much people live in their own world.

The video is wrong. Abstinence is not the only way to stop pregnancy or STIs- if it was- why don't I have 20 kids? It also doesn't give enough facts- and is unclear. The movie I saw in 1969 in health class- Her name was Ellie, His name was Lyle" was a lot better- equally bad at what it was supposed to do but a lot more interesting. I remember it now many years later. This video will be forgotten by the next day.

Jim K reported in a blog posted yesterday, "the Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development met, and after a mini-marathon agreed to approve the new condom video, with revisions. The final vote was 11-1, with the CRC member opposing..."

"The video is wrong. Abstinence is not the only way to stop pregnancy or STIs- if it was- why don't I have 20 kids? It also doesn't give enough facts- and is unclear. The movie I saw in 1969 in health class- Her name was Ellie, His name was Lyle" was a lot better-"

Kind of makes you wish the school board had never tried to change it, doesn't it? If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Of course, that's what CRC said all along.

There are legitimate reasons for people to try to protect their children from dangerous influences, and there are legitimate reasons why people would disagree on what those are. The citizens committee represents a broad range of people, and nobody is going to "win" or "lose," unless the whole discussion breaks down like it did before, in which case everybody loses.

This is a hard job, and not a time for trickery and competitiveness. The CRC liked the original version of the movie, but most people on the committee felt it needed a little bit of this or that. So the committee came up with a list of things that should be changed. After the list was developed, the CRC rep did not vote to adopt the video. She was the only one.

Hopefully when they see the finished product they'll change their mind. It is always nice if we can get consensus; knowing that that doesn't always happen, we rely on majority voting.

Then the only question, and I think this is the real question, is whether those who don't get their way can accept the outcome, or whether we will suffer another disruption.

"unless the whole discussion breaks down like it did before, in which case everybody loses"

Not everybody lost before. The kids won by having a couple more years before they had to be subject to the propaganda of a bunch of restless former flower children.

In any case, the condom demonstration was never the key area of dispute. While CRC did dissent from the video, they said at their initial meeting that they thought the condom demonstration was a done deal. They were surprised as anybody when MCPS pulled it unilaterally.

It's not hard to speculate why MCPS did that, however. There are different possibilities but, personally, I think it's because they didn't want the whole focus to be on the unscientific claims about sexual preference, thinking they could build momentum by first prevailing on the condom issue.